A busy month

So, I've taken the kids on a couple trips, lately, one down to Utah to stay with Jana while Brad was in China, and another to Walla Walla for my sister, Rachel's wedding. Bryson came up a few days later with Jana and Brad. My pictures are all kind of mixed up, so sorry about that, but there are a lot of them and this has started to take way too long. I know I should break them up, but it might be another month or so before I update my blog, so I tried to get as many up as I could. )

Lily has a new fascination with princesses. It is very cute. Aunt Christy gave her this crown. Any girl in a dress is a princess to her. When we were in Walla Walla, my sister, Lori, was going to a prom. She and a couple friends were in their dresses and Lily thought they were all princesses.

This is in Salt Lake. Aunt Ashley is teaching Lily some of her cheerleading moves at Grandma Tate's house. We got to see Grammy, Daylen & Ashley, Brad & Keriann and lots of other family that weekend we were down there, which was a lot of fun.

Here's Brad with Kayla. I had a great picture of Daylen and Brad unlocking my van door with a coat hanger through the window because I locked my keys in the car, but I didn't get that posted. I was very impressed when they had my van unlocked in less than 10 minutes!

Kayla discovered straws and loves to suck on my water bottle. Oh, and I chopped my hair off. It was all the way down my back. This is a fun change. (this is in between the two trips when we were back home for a couple days)

Someone was feeling a little camera shy.

Nathan had fun at Grandma's house (Walla Walla, now) playing with the little people farm. All the animals are huddled around the campfire roasting marshmallows and making smores.

Nathan and Lily had a great time jumping on Grandma's trampoline!

Here's Kayla just chilling on her blanket in the grass while Nathan and Lily ran up and down the many hills at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

It's baaaaaack! After the humble beginnings of the lip sync to "Hold My Hand, Hold My Heart" that I started 11 years ago (now I feel old), it's back! Rachel is rehearsing with Lori, Kara, and Amanda (Tyler's very cute and helpful little sister) for their performance at the wedding reception. My dad wanted to get in on it, too. :)

Here comes the bride! It's off to the temple! Rachel and Tyler got married in the Columbia River Temple.

We stayed in the amazing Cameo Heights Mansion, where the reception was held. Nathan and Lily thoroughly enjoyed the jetted tub in the beautiful "Greek Room" where we slept!

Here they are at breakfast the day of the wedding. Hopefully, Lily will cheer up!

Here we are at the temple just waiting for the bride and groom to come out!

Here's the happy couple as they came out of the temple!

I was able to see one of my good friends from forever at Rachel's reception! It was so much fun to visit and catch up with Emily and her adorable new baby! I am excited for Jana's baby to get here next month! A girl cousin for the kids!

They don't come much cuter than this! What good-looking kids you guys are going to have!

Sisters, sisters. . . (why didn't anyone tell me my necklace was crooked for the picture?)

Home at last! Here are the girls, sitting pretty as we take a walk over to the mailbox.

Nathan got a big bike for Christmas this past year. He is getting pretty confident on it!

Lily is pretty good and zooming around on that little scooter. It works well for her since she still can't quite reach the pedals to the trike.

When we got home from our trip to Walla Walla, my tulips had finally bloomed!! It's only May for goodness sake! Our front yard does not get much sun in the winter, so that's why it's taken them so long to bloom. My mom and my neighbors planted these bulbs last fall right after I had Kayla, so wherever the tulips came up, it was a surprise to me!

I'm finding all sorts of surprises in my flowerbed. These flowers were so cute I had to take a picture of them.

We turned our sprinklers on for the first time on Saturday. Nathan and Lily had a fun time jumping through them. It was a nice day, and Nathan asked if he could put his swimsuit on. But, it wasn't THAT nice of a day. :)

Hopefully, my next post will include grass in our backyard! We are planning to lay sod on the 17th of May . . . so if anyone is in the area. . . :)

Happenings. . .

So, I know it's been awhile. Here are some recent pictures and happenings from our family. Lily was a big help in making some Easter egg sugar cookies, as you can see. She and Nathan love to roll out the dough and help with everything. : )

This is from Easter Sunday. I didn't get a good picture of all of them together, but I got some pretty good ones in groups. :)

Here is Lily, lounging around on the barstool.

Nathan and Lily love to make Kayla smile! They are so good at playing with her and keeping her happy, which is helpful for me.

Kayla is eating solid foods now! She loves the squash and pumpkin that I canned from our ward garden last summer! She is a huge eater. She's taking after her sister, Lily, eating lots of food and still so small. She's in the 15th percentile for both height and weight. She's about 11.5lbs at 5 1/2 months.

Lily loves to get all dressed up her her layers of clothes, as long as at least one of them is a dress or a skirt.

So, last summer, our big projects were a fence, a sprinkler system, and a landscaped front yard. That took the entire summer. Bryson worked so hard and did a great job on those. This summer, our priority project is getting grass in the back! I am looking forward to the day when I can send the kids out to run around on a nice green backyard!

Bryson rotatilled our backyard inbetween conference seesions on Saturday.

It's looking good! Next we have to rake and pick out the million rocks that are back there!

Nathan was a big help. He's raking the area where Bryson is going to build a sandbox.

So, there are some pictures, other big events that have happened lately, are:

• Nathan's eardrum ruptured: It was kind of crazy because we were at the doctor on a Tuesday for well checks and shots and everyone was healthy. Nathan had a fever all night and the next day from his shots. On Thursday, he was having trouble hearing. After everything I said, he said, "what?" or "huh?" That got annoying fast! So, I looked in his ear and all this yucky stuff was coming out. We went back to the doctor and he told us that his eardrum had ruptured and his other ear was beginning to get infected. Bummer. He was quite a trooper though, never in any pain and he loved taking his medicine and didn't mind the ear drops.
• Cookies for dinner? So, I have really gotten in to food storage stuff and trying to be more healthy in my cooking and baking. I had heard you can substitute white beans for butter, but had never tried it. So, I decided to do it. I used beans instead of butter, powdered eggs, half white half whole wheat flour, and quick oats. Of course we had to put lots of chocolate chips in them, but they were yummy! Nathan's reaction to them was, "Can we make these cookies everyday?" My little neighbor girls didn't believe me that there were really beans in them.
• Nathan started preschool: A friend and I started a group preschool for our kids and found lots of interest in the ward. I think we have 10 kids in it! She was very excited about it, so we decided to go ahead and start now and go for a couple months and then take a summer break and start again in the fall. Everyone is doing great and I really enjoy having some one on one time with Lily.
• Kayla is sleeping through the night! I think that's all I need to say about that. :) Well, actually, any of you who have babies, I highly recommend the Babywise book series. I have learned tons from it and it has totally made a difference in Kayla (even though she is still such a SWEET baby, I was having difficulty getting her on a good napping schedule). Anyway, it gave me some good tips that have worked great for her. I just got done reading the book by the same authors called Childwise for kids ages 3-7. I thought I could use a few tips for Nathan. I have really enjoyed that book and it has given me several good ideas.

Happy Blogging!

Our cute little Kayla!

She rolled over for the first time on Friday, February 29th!

Big Smiles!

Are they all three smiling? Close enough, I guess.

Lily found lipstick and you can see what she did with that. She also found some chapstick and put it right onto her lips. :)

Lily got her face painted at a Kid's Fair we went to a couple weeks ago. Of course, it was lots of fun, we even won two goldfish (now we're down to one) and I didn't bring my camera with me. It was like the Bridal Fair's in Provo, but everything was geared towards kids.

We just got home from a week in Walla Walla. Here's Lily wanting to be like the big girls, brushing her teeth.

It's finally nice to go outside and play! We spent a morning at Pioneer Park in Walla Walla with good friends.

Nathan's 4th Birthday!

We celebrated Nathan's birthday while we were at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

(The candles were supposed to be shaped like a four, instead of just having four candles)

Our driveway



This is just one of the big snow storms we've had this past month. We got a ton of snow early Sunday morning and church was canceled (Feb 3).

Lily had to lick every last little bit of brownie batter from the bottom of the bowl!

I can't take too many pictures of this cute girl! She is the sweetest thing!

As I carried Kayla around at church yesterday, I heard every one of the following:


"She's getting so big!"

"She's still so little!"

"She looks like a little Bryson!"

"She looks just like you!"

"She looks so much like Nathan!"

"She is looking so much like Lily!"



I guess they're all right!



Nathan is in Sunbeams now and got his first assignment yesterday to give the theme next Sunday in Primary. We'll see how that goes!

Pantry Shelving

My super talented husband just built me some new sturdy shelves on one side of my pantry. My pantry is about the size of past kitchens I've had. There is no reason not to have food storage now!


As Nathan and Lily were helping me put all of the canned food onto the shelves, Nathan commented, "If I were an alien with four arms, I could hold four cans at a time to put on the shelf."

Very true.

Now it's on the the next project!